


a stillness called faith

by CorvidFeathers



Series: a more measured fate [2]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Family, Fate & Destiny, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Bonding, as much as mordred will allow it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21997831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: After the revelation of his destiny, Mordred and Gawain have a conversation about death and fate.  Gawain fusses.  Mordred broods.Sequel/companion piece toa sickness called fear.
Relationships: Mordred & Gawain (Arthurian)
Series: a more measured fate [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583509
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	a stillness called faith

**Author's Note:**

> this is a little sequel to a sickness called fear that's been knocking around my head. I've been picking at this since late September, and I'm still not totally satisfied with it but I think I finally found something of resolution/balance for the feelings in it. I've been mostly working a lot on my thesis, which is a play based on the grail quest, so most of my Arthurian feelings have been poured into that.
> 
> Gawain is my favorite Arthurian knight tbh but I find it hard to pin him down sometimes? He's one of those whose depiction shifted a lot over the years. My favorite Gawain is the Gawain of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so that will always be something of the Gawain I write.
> 
> Content warning for discussion of Mordred's death wish and sort of fucked up framing of that in the system of honor/chivalry.

When Mordred woke, Gawain was at his bedside, stitching. For a moment, he thought himself back in Orkney; when he recognized the cloth of his own pavilion around him, he thought he must be dreaming. How long had it been since his brother sat at his bedside?

But no matter how he blinked, Gawain remained, whole and undeniably himself. 

It was his surcoat laid out on his lap; the green and gold was still more familiar to Mordred than his own device. A blow has torn through the ivy and one of the points of the star, turning them into a mess of broken threads. Gawain’s fingers, nimble and sword-scarred, moved over the damaged stitchwork, setting it to right thread by thread.

His brother was wholly consumed in his task, and Mordred got the rare opportunity to study him in stillness. Gawain was not a person given to rest; when he was in Camelot, he seemed perpetually on the move, in the training grounds drilling with his brothers, at the Round Table at the king’s right hand, in the gardens charming Guinevere and her ladies, or else out in the world, searching out some foe to best, some quest to devote himself to. And devote himself he did, wholeheartedly; Mordred had never met someone so wholehearted as his brother. He was near five and thirty, but there was something youthful, or perhaps ageless, in his vigor.

But in moments of rest- like now, bent over his mending- there was a remarkable stillness to him. No restless energy, no brooding, only his brows drawn together slightly in focus. 

When Mordred envied his brother, it was for this stillness most of all.

He lay there for a few more moments, watching Gawain’s stitch work. The memory of the past day was seeping slowly into his mind, and with it a faint sense of embarrassment. In the haze of grogginess and sunlight, the raw edge of the revelation seemed blunted, far-away; what he could remember most was his own lack of control, how he had come near to raving before the king and his brothers of the Round Table.

Gawain hasn’t been present for most of it, but he had seen enough. Why was he here now? Mordred may have taken a wound or two, but not enough to warrant any kind of brotherly concern.

He shifted, planning to turn over and close his eyes with the hope that when he next woke Gawain would be gone, but Gawain looked up at just that moment. Their eyes met, and Mordred knew he was not going to escape a fuss.

“You’re awake,” Gawain said, reaching out a hand.

“That’s the usual order of things,” Mordred said. Before he could protest, Gawain pressed a hand to his forehead. “What are you doing?”

“You were feverish, last night,” Gawain said. “Too much cold in your wounds, or an infection, the physician feared.” He hummed softly, thoughtfully. “You still feel warm.”

Now that Mordred considered, there was a lingering heaviness in his body, an ache that he attributed to the strain of the battle. He shook off Gawain’s touch as he prodded at him. “I’m fine, you needn’t play nursemaid.” 

Gawain took the sharpness of his words with a bluff smile. “You slept a day and a night,” he said.

“What?” Mordred sat up, peering past Gawain. The light filtering in told him nothing but that it was day. He tipped his head, listening to the rhythm of the camp outside. It didn’t sound like the day after a battle; the sounds were too orderly, the crash of hammers against steel and the nicker of a horse.

When he turned back, Gawain pressed a cup of something herbal-smelling into Mordred’s hands. “Drink that. Slowly.”

Mordred eyed him. “Gawain, I’m fine-“

“Humor me,” Gawain said. His tone was light, but his gray eyes- Mordred’s eyes, the one feature they shared in common- were serious. 

Mordred sighed, and downed the draught in one gulp. He spluttered and almost choked on the taste. “Jesu.” He coughed and gave Gawain an ancrimonious look. “Are you satisfied?”

Gawain laughed. “I’ll be satisfied when I know you’re well.” There was something in that that made Mordred still.

“You know,” Mordred said. 

Gawain hesitated a moment, and then nodded.

“The king- who else knows?“ Mordred said, starting to rise. Gawain caught his shoulder, and kept him abed. 

“Peace,” Gawain said. “None but me and Lancelot.” Mordred opened his mouth to argue. “ _Peace_ , Mordred, you were in such a state you all but shouted it out to everyone yourself. You know there are no secrets between Arthur and us.” 

No secrets? Arthur and Kay and Guinevere had kept the secret of Mordred’s destiny for two decades, and Mordred knew Lancelot had some more secrets besides. But he forced himself to relax. It was true, perhaps, that there would have been no use trying to keep the secret from those who had been there.

“Don’t tell our brothers,” Mordred said. “Or… or mother.” He couldn’t bear to wonder what Queen Morgause would make of Lady Morgan’s prophecy.

“I won’t,” Gawain said. 

The words calmed Mordred, more than any oath Gawain could have sworn.

They sat in silence for a moment, Mordred turning the king’s words over in his head. _Mercy. Mercy mercy mercy._

“Mordred… I’m proud of you.”

“What?”

“What you did, when Lady Morgan threw fate in your face,” Gawain said.

“I went raving to the king and asked him to kill me,” Mordred snapped. “What exactly do you find commendable in that?”

Gawain met his gaze, his eyes earnest. “I was not much younger than you, when I had my first brush with fate."

Mordred must have heard the story half a hundred times. “If you’re going to tell me about the green knight-“

“It seems like a fine tale now,” Gawain said. “But I lived a year under the threat of a certain death, wearing at my courage, day by day. When the day approached, I wanted nothing more than to flee back to Orkney and forget the oaths I swore altogether. The way the court bid me farewell, it felt as if I were marching to my own bier.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t spend the year in thanks to God,” Mordred bit out. “Is not an honorable death all any of us should strive for? And you were going with all honor.”

“With all outward honor.” There was no twitch, no smile; Gawain did not seem to heed his sarcasm. There was a faraway look in his eyes. “But death is death, and I was so scared that I wept more than once, out of sight of Caerleon. The Green Knight’s challenge and taunts put the honor of the Round Table and the King on my shoulders, as well my own, and that alone drove me onward.”

Mordred swallowed, tearing his gaze away from his brother’s face.

“It is a bitter thing to search for one’s own end.” Gawain’s voice was a hoarse whisper, with neither the fire nor the honey Mordred expected.

A fragment of the night before unfolded in Mordred’s mind, the press of the carpet underneath his knees as he knelt, waiting hoping for the king to strike and end the cavalcade of fears coiling in his chest. 

Along with it came another fragment; the Gawain of Mordred’s youth, the fair-haired, fair-faced older brother who lighted home in Orkney once or twice a year, springing up the stone steps with gifts and stories and a sword wrought by the king’s own smiths. 

That Gawain, fear-worn and trembling, kneeling in a snowy chapel. He could almost feel the bite of the wind, the ice under his fingertips.

He looked up, and saw his own understanding reflected back in Gawain’s eyes.

“When the moment came, I flinched,” Gawain said. “I took my lady’s girdle, and betrayed my oaths and duties as a guest, to save my neck.”

“No one thought worse of you,” Mordred snapped. “None of us can quite reach our ideals, after all, isn’t that what you always say?”

“Offering your life to the king, you didn’t flinch.” The words were quiet and serious.

Mordred stared at him. He opened his mouth, but no words came to him. What words were there? _I was afraid._ All that lay beneath those words coiled in his chest, pricking at the back of his throat.

Gawain must have ascribed some meaning to his silence, because he clasped Mordred’s shoulder, and a smile lit his face up like sunlight, the smile Mordred had been once striven for beyond all else.

Mordred blinked, and blinked again, realizing there were tears in his eyes. He leaned into Gawain’s touch until Gawain folded his arms around him, pulling him into an embrace.

 _I was afraid,_ he wanted to say. _So afraid I wanted to die._ but the words wouldn’t come, so he buried his face in Gawain’s chest. It felt for a moment as if he truly were back in Orkney, a child woken from a nightmare desperate to hide in the safety of his older brother instead of a knight. He was trembling, almost crying again, but Gawain only held him tighter.

They remained like that for a time, before Gawain pulled away, and pressed another cup of herbs into Mordred’s hands. Mordred spluttered and sulked and regained a measure of his usual demeanor as he stared into the dark liquid.

“The others will find out,” he said, at last, when Gawain had returned to his mending. “It pertains to fate and the life of the king. Someone will talk.”

Gawain didn’t try to deny it. “Whatever might come,” he said. “We will bear it together.” The fervor, the faith in the sentence stilled Mordred, and again he could see his brother kneeling in the snow, all fear, all youth, all stillness.

Something clawed its way around his chest, and Mordred couldn’t tell whether to name it envy or love.


End file.
